Death in Relation to the Creation and Fall

How ludicrous. I included Matthew Henry's interpretation of this passage, which is the one most familiar to me and supported by traditional Bible believers. Yours is strained to the max. Yes, the Creation itself, the creatures, are groaning in anticipation of their liberation from the bondage of corruption, WHICH IS DEATH and everything related to death. The Fall of humanity immediately brought death to humanity, but GOD then subjected the innocent animals and all the rest of Creation to death and corruption for our sake. That's the standard orthodox interpretation and it conforms to the passage which your view does not. Oh TYPICAL "liberal Christian" distortion of scripture. Blather and balderdash.RETHINK THAT PHRASE "And not only they but ourselves also" -- It CLEARLY IMPLIES THAT SOMETHING OTHER THAN OURSELVES, I.E. THE CREATURES, THE CREATION, groans and SO DO WE.Look we've been through this dozens of times already on this thread. You aren't going to give up your view of all these scriptures and I'm not going to give up mine.

That's a lot of word twisting, DA. You have to stretch and strain the scriptures to arrive at your interpretation.

If there is one thing this passage can NOT mean, it's that the UNSAVED are anticipating the manifestation of the Sons of God, who are the saved, groaning in waiting for the redemption of the body. The LAST thing they want is the manifestation of the Sons of God.And it would make no sense at all for Paul to clearly identify Adam as the first man and the cause of sin and death, and then start using such odd cryptic terms for unsaved mankind as "creation" and "creatures" let alone the oddness of calling only some of humanity "creatures." I don't know how you can talk yourself into that reading. Delving into the Greek doesn't make the situation any clearer. The phrase "and not only they but ourselves also" clearly identifies a difference between humanity and "the creation" or the "creatures."Yes I see your point at Mark 16:15 and here Matthew Henry even agrees with you but I'm not sure I agree with Matthew Henry in this case. It seems poetic to me, and a hint that the entire Creation, every created thing, will be redeemed in the end in some sense too. Yes, "the world" generally refers to mankind, but "creature" is just too odd. Maybe I'll find a commentator who agrees with me about this or maybe not. I'll let you know one way or the other.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Only Spurgeon and Gill. Yes, that surprised me, though their views didn't agree with you either. But two thirds of the church fathers on my side is a LOT more than you have on your side, and Matthew Henry all by himself is enough to represent the orthodox point of view. However, it would be nice to come up with others, if I ever have the time and patience for that.Subjecting the Creation to "vanity" CAN'T refer to humanity, even unsaved humanity, it HAS to refer to the Creation as a whole, and this was done by God in RESPONSE to Adam's sin, for humanity's sake. It CANNOT refer to humanity, it HAS to refer to the rest of Creation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I agree with DevilsAdvocate on this point, although I dispute many of his particular readings. You come at the scripture as a scholar and not as a believer, as I said before, and a believer regards the Bible as God's word, which means that it was "written" by God Himself, inspired by God, overseen by God, however you prefer to put that. It's God's own work, God's own revelation to us. It is not to be read as other books are read, completely by human standards, such as its being understood one way or another "well after it was written." It is to be BELIEVED first and foremost.But as a matter of fact the books that were finally accepted as canon had been passed down as inspired by God from the earliest days, copied and passed from church to church. There were thousands of churches and soon thousands of copies of the separate books, and every council drew up a list of the books regarded as canonical until finally the whole collection was gathered together as one. There were some disputes, mostly about some books that ended up NOT being accepted as canon, such as Enoch, which some of the Church Fathers treated as canon, but Paul's writings were never disputed as inspired. There was no "whole," as we now have it, in the early centuries, but when the parts were assembled into a whole it was regarded as wholly inspired by God.Anyway, DA is right, the Bible is to be read as a whole, every part in the light of every other part, the more obscure parts according to the clearer parts. It is to be read as God's own message to the human race. The authors of the separate books were His instruments through whose personalities and perspectives God's word comes to us. They serve to tell us that there are many things in God's revelation that we'll eventually find out about that right now are not essential to our salvation. This is not about parts that were left out but parts that were included that we can judge for ourselves. You believe the destructive fragmenting work of the "scholars" rather than the work of the generations of believing theologians. Job is resolved with a declaration of God's justice and righteousness, hardly a disputation with the prophets. Again, you simply miss the whole point of the meaning of its being God's word. Genesis was written to us just as Paul's books were. God knows the end from the beginning, that's why the Bible is the only book of actual prophecy ever written, a fact that the scholars try to dismantle by redating the prophetic parts to periods after their fulfillment, which makes a confused incoherent mess of the prophetic books. Actually, you are here influenced by modern Judaism which is NOT the perspective of those who wrote the Torah, as Jesus continually pointed out. They MISREAD the scripture in His time and they misread it now. The views of ALL the books build on one another, Job fits with Jeremiah fits with Jonah fits with Ezekiel fits with Samuel etc etc etc. The New Testament shows us HOW to read the Old, but you are only going to keep yourself in the dark by insisting on reading it the other way around. Oh God is a LOT bigger than the time period between Genesis and Paul. THIS is what you fail to grasp, to your GREAT disadvantage. This may not be as true as you think, DA. Moses WAS the author of Genesis and he knew God face to face. He foretold the coming of "another prophet" like himself, that the people would HAVE to hear. He certainly looked forward to Jesus Christ. What a small idea of God you have.

The NASB is considered to be accurate but it's based on the corrupted Alexandrian Greek texts which were either corrupted in the early centuries or outright forgeries later, and its translation was also influenced by the Revision of 1881 which was produced by the same committee that foisted those texts on us. It's probably just an inept translation, one of the ugliest I know of, even if it's accurate to the Greek. One thing I know about the KJV translators is that they were the best of the best in all the languages and masters of good English, which cannot be said of the 1881 committee, most of whom were also not even believers although the KJV men were definitely believers and feared to offend God in any way.HOWEVER, I don't see a big difference in this reading anyway. It's merely awkward, bad English. You still have to identify what the "only this" means which is contrasted with "we ourselves." There is no way that could refer to unsaved humanity. Most of them just want to die and never regain consciousness. However, if they DO suffer this groaning, these birth pangs, it is not with any happy (eager) anticipation. That passage cannot refer to them.That awkward "not only this" has to refer to the rest of Creation, whose groanings "we ourselves" share. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If you are going to research the Greek texts and the Revision of 1881 would you please include my blog on that subject The Great Bible Hoax of 1881 in your researches? I believe I've at least touched on all the important issues involved there, and my main reference is Dean John Burgon who powerfully criticized the 1881 revision when it came out [not to be confused with the Burgon Society which is a KJV-only group I don't fully agree with], and I have many references in the margin to source material. There are also people who comment on that blog from time to time who are scholars on the subject way beyond anything I claim. I can point you to them if you are interested.As for the original Greek, translation isn't always best served by a word-for-word rendering since languages are rarely equivalent on that level. I haven't researched this particular issue but one of the things Burgon criticized was the revisionists' slavish "schoolboyish" understanding of Greek, and their apparent tone-deafness to good English. Well I'm glad you are at least considering that it may refer to all Creation. As for implying that all Creation was immortal and without death until the Fall, this is the clearest passage that implies that which is why I keep referring to it.But there are other scripture references that support it, even the others I also keep referring to if read in the context of each other. If for instance "the wages of sin is death" although that specifically has to refer to humanity, it's also a blanket definition that suggests that since there was no sin in the world before the Fall that has to mean that there was no death whatever in the world before the Fall. Same with "By one man sin entered the world." Again it is referring to humanity but it also makes the equation Sin=Death; no sin, no death. This is after all the basis on which we need a sinless Savior to die for us, so that the death He died was OUR death and not His. Then you have God cursing the ground for humanity's sake, which brought forth thistles for the first time. No mention is made of animal life, but then we have the passage we are discussing in Romans 8 where it is worded "God subjected them to vanity" for our sake, and I can't see how it could refer to anything but the REST of Creation besides humanity whose groanings we also share. I can't see splitting Creation between saved and unsaved humanity, and the phrase "not only this" or "not only they" has to imply Creation apart from human beings. And it is said there that they too suffer from the "bondage of corruption," We know that all Creation NOW dies, of course, which means it all suffers disease and deformity and decay and so on, which is the other part of my argument that all this IS suffering by all creatures, so that this is no GOOD Creation, so it cannot possibly have been the case before the Fall. And again the unsaved aren't at all eager to see the manifestation of the Sons of God. I earnestly wish some of them would join us but as long as they stay unsaved the whole idea is obnoxious to them. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting.

But inference that is based on the whole tenor of scripture is quite proper and even required, and I've given a long paragraph of my inferences, again, in the previous post. It's pretty strange that you say the man was not cursed since after all eating of the forbidden tree brought death to him and all his posterity. We find him and Eve cowering in fear of God after their sin, and now ashamed of their bodies which they feel the need to cover with fig leaves. A GREAT change is implied by this (they've lost their spiritual faculties and spiritual connection with God and become merely "flesh" which will also die in due time), and if you don't want to call it a "curse" I don't know what other word would be strong enough to convey the actual situation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

First, I don't think I treat inferences as on a par with scripture.Second, I guess I've always regarded God's cursing the ground as an indirect curse of Adam since the upshot is that he will have to toil painfully from then on to grow food to eat.But you said you have a theory about this, so please explain.

I'm sure Jesus finds it very enlightening that His command to believe is irrational. Not the Bible, it doesn't work that way. It's designed to defeat the inquiries of mere intellect while illuminating those of faith. Pascal said this very nicely in His Pensees, wish I could find the quote in the form I remember first reading it. Again, it doesn't work that way. But I didn't say you can't scrutinize it, the rule is you must scrutinize it from a standpoint of faith and not critical thought of the sort you'd apply to any other text. The former will lead you well, the latter will only fragment and destroy and leave you in the dark.It doesn't hurt anything for inspired books to be left out of the canon, Enoch is still available for us to read, but it would hurt a great deal to include uninspired books in the canon. There are good reasons why Enoch was not included as canon, although it remained a respected source nevertheless.Wow, it's Job's FRIENDS that are modeled on the major prophets? Wow, what a blasphemous indictment of the major prophets. I'm not up to entering into a dispute about that, but boy is that a perfect proof of the destructiveness of your method.Your post continues in the same vein of course, to my mind clearly demonstrating the destructive fragmenting effects of your method. Try faith instead some time. Faith unifies and builds.This does all make me very grateful to God, however, for giving me that faith when I first began to read the Bible. I just "knew" it was God's word and I read it as God's word from the beginning. I don't know if it's possible to simply decide to take that stance or not, perhaps it has to be given as a gift from God, but I'd like to think it might be possible to make such a choice and see where it leads. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Thank you for explaining to DevilsAdvocate what I meant about the prophet Moses was referring to.But you are misrepresenting the position of belief in the second part of your comment. Of course there are warnings throughout scripture against trusting the FALSE prophets, nobody says we are to believe EVERYTHING, far far far from it. The command to believe is of course about believing the right people and the right teachings, which are of course first of all Jesus Himself, who validated all writers of the Old Testament, and the entire scripture itself. God has made sure we have what we need to believe rightly, but you have to trust Him first, pray for His guidance and not put your trust in your own fallen mind.Jesus said "Repent and believe," NOT doubt, dispute and disagree. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

double postEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

I AM convinced by the overall implication of the scripture verses I've put together, along with the general tenor of scripture as a whole, that there could not have been the death of any creature before the Fall (plants excepted for sure, and possibly insects and single-celled creatures excepted as well, but only possibly), but I can see that the subject has been problematic for many even before evolution became the reason for questioning these things, so I grant you that.Death is just not a good thing in scripture or in personal experience. HBD's attempt to make death into a good thing we are simply incapable of appreciating leaves me astonished and perplexed.And again: Even if you think only humanity died at the Fall and that Jesus' death was only for humanity, doesn't that pretty much eliminate the theory of evolution, at least for human beings?Jesus joined us in death in order to abolish death. The Puritan John Owen wrote a book called "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ,", a title that all by itself suggests to my mind that there is no good thing about death nohow noway. Not that you've suggested there is, I'm only saying that these considerations about death in general also figure strongly in my conclusion that God could not have created any living thing with death built in to its destiny.

Just discussed this same example on another thread, an old thread resurrected I think, about faith? Oh well, my answer is the same: Jesus is NOT saying "Believe without evidence," He's saying "believe the witnesses," those witnesses Thomas had refused to believe, "believe what the disciples told you who witnessed the evidence you now see for yourself." It's the same physical evidence, and blessed are those who recognized that fact without having to see it for themselves. Jesus is teaching us that our faith IS established on evidence, but since it's all one-time historical events we are not personally going to get to witness that evidence directly, but He's given us witnesses galore and He wants us to trust them, and through them we possess exactly the same evidence they had. Witness evidence IS evidence and it's evidence of exactly the same things we'd see if we personally witnessed them.One witness won't do it, even two or three might be suspect. Levitical Law required two or three at least because witnesses are not always reliable. But for the big claims of the Bible we have LOTS of witnesses. Thomas himself had the disciples who had seen the risen Lord, a lot more than two or three. We're in the same position as Thomas and what we are to learn from that incident is that we have a ton of evidence, we are not asked to do without evidence, we are asked to recognize the evidence we have.I'll have to come back to the rest of your post, but no the Book of Mormon is NOT designed as the Bible is.

The Bible is our source of the truth, we don't choose between the prophets presented to us as true prophets and we trust that the Bible has revealed the grounds for recognizing a false prophet. You cannot pit one part of the Bible against another or you miss the whole point.Have to come back to this.